Trumbull girls basketball beats Westhill

Emery Filmer

Updated 10:53 pm, Friday, December 21, 2012

TRUMBULL -- It was a matchup of two of the top girls basketball teams in the Fairfield County Interscholastic Athletic Conference. Even more appetizing, two of the league's top players, Trumbull's Alexa Pfohl and Westhill's Meg D'alessandro, were going head-to-head.

Trumbull swept both decisions Friday. The Eagles remained undefeated with a hard-fought 42-31 victory, while Pfohl was a decisive winner in the individual battle.

"D'alessandro is one of the top players in the league so we challenged (Pfohl) at practice," Trumbull coach Steve Tobitsch said. "I guess she took it personally."

D'alessandro scored 38 points against the Eagles last season while going against Pfohl and her older sister Victoria, who is now playing at Eastern Connecticut. Alexa would have none of that on Friday.

Pfohl scored a game-high 18 points and added six rebounds, five assists and four steals for Trumbull (5-0). But her performance on defense was even more impressive. D'alessando was held to six points and two field goals, although she did have eight rebounds and five assists

"Pfohl did a great job defensively on Meg," Westhill coach Mike King said. "Meg was never able to get started. She gave it up a lot in the first quarter (three assists) but she was really frustrated."

Pfohl had 10 points in the first half as Trumbull took a 25-22 lead. She had eight more in the second half, which was just one point less than the Vikings scored as a team after intermission.

"We knew we had to stop D'alessandro if we were going to win," Tobitsch said. "Lexi did a phenomenal job on her but she got a lot of help from the other four girls on the court."

Trumbull's Erin Moore had seven of her 11 points in the final six minutes and finished with a game-high 11 rebounds. Before the final six minutes, Moore was clearly frustrated with Westhill's physical play inside and a lack of blown whistles.

"Erin kept her head up and that shows not only how strong she is physically but also mentally," Tobitsch said.

The Eagles' center took over as foul trouble plagued the Vikings, who got within 31-27 with seven minutes remaining in the game.

Besides point guard Steph Roones picking up her third foul midway through the second quarter, the Vikings' two tallest girls, Jackie Passman and Tyler Evans (11 points, but all in the first half), played the fourth quarter with four fouls each.

"With Jackie and Tyler in foul trouble, we had to be passive and (Moore) took advantage," King said.

Despite D'alessandro's struggles against Pfohl, the Vikings stayed close right into the first minute of the fourth quarter thanks to strong defense of their own. After the first quarter, Trumbull missed 24 of 30 field-goal attempts before making their final two shots to finish 14 for 47 (Westhill was 12 for 31). But the Trumbull defense was even better.